


Phone A Friend

by TheBigCat



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everything's Fine, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22921687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBigCat/pseuds/TheBigCat
Summary: “You’re doingwhat?” said the alien slave trader, blinking in confusion with all three of its eyes.“I’m texting my dad."
Relationships: Seventh Doctor & Ace McShane
Comments: 20
Kudos: 70





	Phone A Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat of a companion to [this.](https://therogueofblood.tumblr.com/post/190420388000/completely-realistic-and-plausible-au-where-ace)

“You’re doing  _ what? _ ” said the alien slave trader, blinking in confusion with all three of its eyes.

“I’m texting my dad,” the operative from the Celestial Intervention Agency said again, furiously typing away at the tiny brick-shaped device she had pulled out from her strange over-the-back satchel.

“You’re doing  _ what  _ to your  _ what? _ ” demanded the trader, and then, “drop that! Drop your communication device! The auction is about to begin -”

“Just a moment,” said the operative, reading something off her phone. “Huh – just a moment. He says he wants to call me, is that all right?”

“ _ Drop the communicator. _ ”

“Cool, thanks,” said the operative, and typed something else into her communication device. Almost immediately, it started buzzing insistently. She pressed something on its screen, and raised it to her ear, and said, “heya, Professor. Sorry about missing Otherstide dinner – I had a thing with Leela that night.” Longer pause. “Yeah. No, I really  _ am _ sorry, I got sidetracked, and –  _ we both have time machines, how is scheduling even a problem _ – yeah, no – there was something else, that’s not why I called.” Another pause. “So, there’s this race of aliens, the, uh, the Scrollnée – oh  _ cool,  _ you do know them – and they’re trying to sell off all of humanity as slaves – yeah, yeah. Wait, again? All right. Well, I’m doing a CIA thing, and they’re trying to sell me, too.” Pause. “Yep. Chains and everything. Yeah. It’s not great.” Another pause. “Am I-? I’m kind of emotionally distressed, I guess? Just a bit. Also, I really don’t want to be sold as a slave.” She listened intently to whatever the person on the other side of the line was saying. “Uh-huh. Right. Okay. Hm. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll tell them.”

She looked up, saw that approximately ten guns were trained on her at that very moment, and acquired a slightly annoyed expression. But only a very mild one. Like this wasn’t actually that much of an inconvenience to her, just a  _ bit  _ of one.

“He says to stop being evil,” she told the room in general. 

There was no real reaction to that, but that was mainly because literally everybody there had no actual idea  _ how  _ to react. 

After a second of this stunned incomprehension, she turned back to her phone. “I don’t think they’re going to,” she said. “Yeah – yeah, I know you tried. Listen, I’m going to have to hang up in a second – I’m kind of in the middle of something? – yeah, I know. I  _ tried –  _ like  _ you _ would’ve done anything different – okay, can you pick me up?” She paused, and then glanced at the people holding the guns on her. “Sorry, where are we, again?” 

“We are about to shoot you if you don’t  _ drop the communicator, _ ” snapped the ringleader.

She sighed, and then said into the phone, “uh, you’ll probably need to track my signal. They’re being evil again, you know what they’re like.” A pause, a smile, and then, “wicked. See you soon.” She ended the call, and dropped the communicator into her pocket. “Okay. Where were we?” 

In response, one of the slave traders cocked a gun at her with an ominous  _ click. _ Almost instantly, the other traders followed.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, right.”

This probably would have escalated into something really quite messy if it hadn’t been for the fact that at that exact moment, the rear wall of the room exploded as a large blue box crashed cleanly through it, the light on top of it flashing wildly. Slave traders were blasted away and scattered across the ground like skittles. White dust was everywhere.

“ _ There _ we go,” said the agent, looking satisfied as she got to her feet, brushing powder off her trousers. 

The door to the box swung open, revealing a tiny figure with a Panama hat and a mischievous glint in his eye. “Aha,  _ rrr _ right on time,” he said.

“For once,” the CIA agent sniped.

“You wound me, Ace; you really do.”

The two of them looked delighted to see each other, despite the irreverent back and forth, and in fact, the moment they got within a foot of each other they were hugging tightly. 

“It’s good to see you, though,” said the CIA agent, breaking away. 

“And likewise to you,” he said, tapping her neatly on the nose. “What now?”

“Well, they flung my TARDIS into deep space, so picking that up might be a start,” she said.

“Of course. Then maybe we could take a trip someplace pleasant...?”

“I’d like that,” she said, “I really would. Lately, every mission I’ve been on has involved dark corridors or rock quarries, and every new location looks like another scene out of a low-budget BBC sci-fi television series that’s about to get canceled abruptly.”

“Thankfully,” said her friend, “we are not in a low-budget sci-fi series, and we’re not about to get cancelled any time soon. So the sky’s the limit, so to speak.”

“Excellent,” said the CIA agent, and waved cheerfully at the traders as she followed her friend into his blue box. “So, I was thinking we could maybe try dropping by - “

The door shut behind them, cutting off any further sound.

There was a brief silence. 

“What just happened?” asked one of the slave traders, but of course there was no response because the blue box had just begun the process of fading neatly but noisily out of existence. 

Five minutes later, that particular part of the traders’ space station exploded. There was a very high probability that this was related to the two people and their weird blue box, but everybody there was too busy panicking and screaming to put too much thought into that.

(If anyone had bothered to call up Gallifrey about this particular incident at about that point, the co-ordinator on the other end would have said something along the lines of ‘oh not  _ again _ ’ and something vague and angry about risotto before hanging up. But nobody did.)

This was, more or less, a normal work day.


End file.
